Friday, July 16, 2010

In 1934 the Paris art world was in a ferment of Surrealism. Salvador Dalí was at the height of his powers. Everyone was delving into the subconscious. One artist, André Villeboeuf (1893-1956), published in that year a remarkable album of 16 Surrealist etchings, entitled Lubies (Whims, or Whimsies). 26 copies were published "Aux dépens des Cinq-Vingt". I have copy 25, which was Villeboeuf's own.

Each etching is signed, justified and titled in pencil, but low down the sheet rather than directly below the image. The etchings are printed on Hollande van Gelder wove paper, presumably by the artist himself, as no printer is mentioned.

These etchings look beyond the modish self-regard of the Surrealists to locate the surreal in a long artistic tradition. There are touches in them of the grotesqueries of Hieronymous Bosch, the absurd animal/human hybrids of J.J. Grandville, even the fairy fantasies of Richard Doyle. But the artist they reference most is the one André Villeboeuf revered above all others: Francisco Goya. In 1799 Goya published a sequence of 80 etchings entitled Caprichos, which use elements of the supernatural and the surreal to satirize society's injustices. All 80 Caprichos can be seen here; they get weirder as the series progresses. André Villeboeuf didn't call his portfolio Caprices - he probably felt it would be ridiculously self-aggrandizing - but the debt to Goya is clear in this sequence of startling and unsettling visions. I'll let the images speak for themselves.

Monday, July 12, 2010

On Friday I took a magical mystery tour of London by Routemaster bus, conducted by typographers Phil Baines and Catherine Dixon, whose knowledge of London's public lettering is unparalleled. Along the way we scorned the "mean serifs" of the inscription on the Royal Institute of Painters in Watercolour, admired the fantastic Victorian storefront of James Smith & Sons (Umbrellas) Ltd in New Oxford Street, and learned that the windows spelling out OXO on the iconic Oxo Tower were a cunning way of bypassing a ban on advertising on the riverfront. This enchanting experience would have prompted me to post on the shopfronts of London and Paris in the parallel art of Eric Ravilious and Lucien Boucher, but I've already done that here. So instead I shall leap from the Oxo Tower in London to the Martini Tower in Brussels, as seen by the artist Laure Malclès-Masereel. This modernist masterpiece with its distinctly 1960s sanserif lettering was pulled down in 2001-2002, the slow process of demolition being recorded here.

Laure Malclès-Masereel, Tour Martini

Lithograph, 1973

This is one of 20 signed lithographs of Brussels by Laure Malclès-Masereel for the portfolio Bruxelles, published in 1973. The lithographs were printed on Hopyard Mill paper at the Centre Frans Masereel in Kasterlee. There were 21 hand-signed copies, and a further 21 copies on Japan paper and 60 on Hopyard Mill, which were initialled and dated in the stone. There were also 20 hors-commerce copies, for which the paper is not specified.

Laure Malclès-Masereel, La marchande d'escargots

Original drawing, charcoal on tracing paper, 1973

Laure Malclès-Masereel, La marchande de caracoles

Lithograph, 1973

Bruxelles was supposed to be a joint project between Laure Malclès-Masereel and her husband Frans Masereel, but his death in 1972 meant that only one drawing by Frans could be used, and the rest of portfolio is by Laure alone. I think her lithographs are wonderfully evocative of the city and its street life. They also include several further examples of public lettering on shopfronts, bars, restaurants, and chimneys.

Laure Malclès-Masereel, Marché Ste-Catherine

Lithograph, 1973

Laure Malclès-Masereel, Marché aux fleurs et oiseaux à la Grand-Place

Lithograph, 1973

Laure Malclès-Masereel, Foire aux antiquaires (Grand Sablon)

Lithograph, 1973

Laure Malclès-Masereel, Marché aux puces

Lithograph, 1973

Laure Malclès-Masereel was born in Avignon in 1911. Under her maiden name of Laure Malclès she illustrated works by Alain-Fournier, Mary Webb, and others with original lithographs; I have her edition of Alain-Fournier's Le Grand Meaulnes, but I don't think I have photos of it available. Sometime around 1950 she met the Belgian master of the woodcut Frans Masereel (1889-1972), and after their marriage she worked under the name Laure Malclès-Masereel. She died in 1981.

Laure Malclès-Masereel, Boulevard Adolphe Max

Lithograph, 1973

Laure Malclès-Masereel, Place de Brouckère

Lithograph, 1973

Laure Malclès-Masereel, Boulevard Adolphe Max vu de l'hôtel Plaza

Lithograph, 1973

Laure Malclès-Masereel, Panorama de Bruxelles

Lithograph, 1973

I suspect Laure Malclès-Masereel must have been related to the theatre-designer and lithographer Jean-Denis Malclès (1912-2002), but I haven't so far been able to establish how.